One afternoon near the end of February, a couple of weeks after Mitchell had abandoned us to our hunger, we were sitting outside our tents. Mitchell had decided he wasn’t going to go and minister that day. Too much work. Much too hot. The Lord wanted him to stay in the camp. So he spent the day sitting around talking about his favorite subject, which was, of course, himself. Barzee was lapping up every word. I was hardly even listening. After eight months of listening to him every minute of every day, there wasn’t a whole lot about him that I hadn’t heard before. But I always tried at least to act like I was paying attention. There was a steep price to pay if he felt like I didn’t give him the respect he thought he deserved. But I wasn’t listening, I was daydreaming; about my family, about my friends, wondering if I would ever be able to go back to school. It was a sunny day, and the skies were clear. It was already getting hot and I wondered what the summers would be like in California. Was I going to spend the rest of my life here? Was I going to spend the rest of my life on the top of this mountain, miles from anyone and anything, surrounded by boulders and scrub oaks? Would we ever go back to Utah? I really didn’t know.
Sitting there, I started to hear the low roar of helicopter rotors. The sound grew louder and Mitchell immediately stood up. The roar of engines and beating blades began to fill the air. Mitchell shoved me into the tent, then grabbed Barzee and pulled her in as well. Standing near the entrance, he jerked down the flap that we used for a door. The sound of the helicopter grew louder. It was coming right toward us. He motioned for Barzee and me to scoot to the back of the tent. I slid backward, keeping my face toward the door. The helicopter came to a hover right over our camp. There was a deafening roar of engines and the wind stirred up a terrible swirl of dust. The tarp tunnel was shaking so badly I thought it was going to be blown away. For a moment, I flashed back to the afternoon in the mountains over Salt Lake City, three days after I had been taken. But unlike that afternoon, this time I wasn’t anxious or excited. Whoever was in the helicopter, and for whatever reason they had to check out our camp, I was pretty certain they weren’t looking for me. I knew soldiers weren’t going to rappel from the helicopter to save me. Still, I kept my eyes toward the sound. After all, you never know.…
The helicopter hovered a few minutes, then moved on. Mitchell made us stay inside the tent until he was certain it was safe. When he finally allowed us to come out, he was a changed man once again. Less confident. Not as cocky. Full of doubts and fear.
He looked at Barzee and said, “That is a sign from God. It’s time that we move again.”
I knew it wasn’t a sign of anything. Mitchell was just scared the helicopter would come back or that the pilots would send police to investigate our strange camp.
Barzee looked at him but didn’t answer for a second. I knew she hated this place. I knew she hated being stuck in the camp twenty-four hours a day. I knew she hated never being allowed to go into the city to party or to scavenge food or to see something besides the trees that were around us. I knew that, like me, she was desperate to talk to someone new. I didn’t know what she expected out of a new place, but I suppose she thought it couldn’t be worse than the situation she was in. So she hesitated only for a moment before she agreed, “Yes, God wants us to move on.”
They started talking of all the places they could go, both of them getting excited about the possibilities. When you don’t own anything, or have any family ties or friends, and when you don’t really care where you end up as long as there’s a place to beg for food, the whole world opens up. They talked about New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They talked about a lot of other places too.
My heart sank. I felt a tinge of panic and despair. All of the places they were talking about were even farther from my home! I always assumed we would eventually make our way back toward Utah. It was my only hope of getting rescued. No one had found me in California, but no one was looking for me here. But if we could make it back to Utah, I might be recognized. Someone might see me and realize who I was. They might call the police and save me without me having to do anything that Mitchell could blame me for.
All of the places they were talking about were on the East Coast. No one would recognize me there. And I had seen how much effort it had taken to get to California. Months of planning. Months of ministering to get the money. It would be so much harder to come back once we had made it all the way out to Boston or New York. Once we were there, there was no way we’d ever come back west.
As I thought, Mitchell started talking about his quest to obtain the remaining six young wives that God had told him to get. In fact, he said, it had been revealed to him that he was supposed to take seven times seventy wives. But for the time being, he was willing to focus on just obtaining the initial seven. As I sat there listening to his drivel, an idea started forming in my head. I thought of all the ways Mitchell had justified what he did by using religion. I thought of all the times that he had gotten away with things by lying and manipulating people and their emotions. Down in the city, he used faith and scripture to manipulate people a dozen times a day. It was what he did to get everything he wanted. It was what he did to get away with everything.